


Saw something in your eyes, I wanted for myself

by xantissa



Series: Middle Ground [2]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Arthur POV, M/M, Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 03:30:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xantissa/pseuds/xantissa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was almost like fate, finding Eames in Poland again. Only this time it was Eames tethering on the edge of sanity, trying to kill himself in illegal cage fights.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saw something in your eyes, I wanted for myself

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so Arthur's POV is not my strong point. Damn it.  
> Song: Saw something – Dave Gahan  
> 17-05-2013

I saw something in your eyes  
I'm sure  
(Oh baby) I saw it  
There was something in your eyes  
I wanted it for myself

 

Arthur woke up when one of his two cell phones pinged the e-mail announcement. Immediately he reached for it. This particular device was reserved for only the most important contacts and usually stayed silent unless he put out specific requests. It was also his oldest number that connected to a network of e-mail addresses he kept up because he still owed favors to people who had those contacts. 

He squinted at the glare of the screen as he waited for the message to load. When he saw the familiar addy he immediately opened. This address belonged to a woman that finally let him get off the military hit list. She was only seven years older than him but held incredible power all over the world. She was a financial advisor of sorts; she had an incredible talent for using legal investments to make some shady cash look squeaky clean. Unlike other money launderers Arthur met, her setup really was perfect. She was only a middle man and at no point did she actually own the money and she found different and varied legal investments all over eastern Europe.

She was the one that scrubbed his history clean, that took the damn CIA off his back. It turned out sometimes very powerful people liked to be just seen as themselves. He knew going in that becoming her lover would be very beneficial to him and he was right. Since then he made sure to meet up with her every year or so, to exchange information. She was also one of the very few people who knew his identity and where he came from. The other thing she did for him was keep her eyes open for somebody he really wanted to find again.

The e-mail was very short and concise, like she always was with business matters.

“Found him, video in attachment.”

Rubbing at his eyes, Arthur rolled out of bed and booted up his computer. His cell was too small to see anything worthwhile on the tiny screen. As soon as his internet connection was established he clicked on the attachment and waited for the video to load up.

It was bad quality, probably done with a cheap hand camera. The image was jerking and weaving all over the place. The first thing Arthur recognized was a fighting ring. A caged area with three men inside. Two of them were dressed only in knee length shorts, the other looked like a referee. The two fighters were bare-chested and barefoot and moving quickly. One of the fighters, the one in dark shorts was beating on the other one. The clip was very short so Arthur had to download it to his computer, slow it down and watch again before he saw what Monica’s message was about.

The man in dark shorts had very recognizable tattoos on his arms, especially the tribal one on his right shoulder that almost reached his elbow.

Eames.

 

Arthur looped the video after enhancing it as much as possible. The man was definitely the soldier he met all those years ago and never really managed to track down again. The tattoos were as good as fingerprints but... he didn’t look anything like the man Arthur remembered. Instead of the very competent, very charming and vaguely threatening man of before, the video showed a man out of his mind. He attacked his opponent like a man possessed, raining blows on the already loosing fighter as if he genuinely wanted to kill him with his bare hands. He was also much bigger than Arthur remembered. Granted even then he was big, muscles chiseled and huge in comparison to Arthurs own skinny body. But now... now he was at least twice as big, his upper body so build up he looked like he could break a lesser man in half without even trying. His stomach was rigged with muscles and his thighs suggested he could lift a lot. His whole body seemed like a weapon but it was the energy emanating from him that surprised Arthur the most. 

It seemed wild, intense and nightmarishly dangerous.

Granted, they’d both changed. A lot of years had passed by but... somehow Arthur didn’t expect this. He didn’t know what exactly he expected if anything at all, but this... this wasn’t it.

He booked the next flight out to Warsaw and fired off a message to Monica, telling her the arrival date.

* * *

It seemed appropriate somehow that he would meet Eames in Poland again, the same place he met him all those years ago.

He saw her immediately after leaving the arrival gate. She was dressed in her preferred, conservative pantsuit, with her waist length blond hair a beacon that made her easy to find the crowd. For as many years as he knew her, she always kept her hair very long and very blond, no matter what the fashion trends were at the moment. She was a pretty woman but not beautiful in a breathtaking way. It was nice that she came herself, Arthur expected an assistant or maybe a taxi driver waiting for him. Her time became rather expensive those last years.

“Monica.” He greeted first, aware she wouldn’t call his name until she knew what name he had on his passport this time. She was smart that way.

“It’s good to see you.” She gave him a hug and a small kiss to the corner of his lips. “Do you want to book into a hotel to rest a bit or go straight to where he is?” He smiled at her small talk. It was something she never had a good handle on. It was always one sentence and then back to business.

He hefted his single bag, indicating it was all of his baggage.

“I don’t need a hotel right now.”

She nodded, smiling at him again and led him out of the airport to the parking spaces and showed him to her car. Another hybrid, since she seemed so fond of them. Toyota Prius this time.

As they tried to battle the traffic of the city, heading towards the suburbs, he finally asked what he had on his mind the whole plane ride.  
“How did you find him? I had all my sources on lookout and got nothing for years.”

“A few years ago a client of mine got me into sponsoring K2 tournaments.” 

When Arthur looked at her uncomprehending, she rolled her eyes and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “Americans” under her breath.

“K2 are MMA tournaments that happen mostly in Europe and Eastern Europe. Mixed martial arts are very popular here and the tournament allows the lesser known fighters to gain recognition and money. From a business point of view it’s an extremely profitable venue, the return rate close to a hundred percent for main sponsors. Anyway I got into the sport more than I expected.” There she blushed faintly and Arthur thought that all the naked, chiseled chests on display didn’t hurt her interest at all. “Since my involvement is official, a lot of trainers and managers invite me to all the fights organized outside the tournaments. Not all of them are official or even legal but a lot of fighters can’t really afford anything else. There’s this unofficial contest taking place every six months on the outskirts of Warsaw and I was invited. There’s always a lot of ex-military there. Imagine my surprise when I saw your mysterious Mr. Eames entering the cage. All that searching and he all but came to me.”

It took them almost two hours to pass the city proper and reach the outskirts. Monica talked a little about her work, common acquaintances. It was a good thing she didn’t expect him to contribute because he barely listened, too wrapped up in trying to untangle his feelings.

It took them another half an hour since leaving the city proper before they reached their destination. The slow crawl was caused mostly by the fact that they kept driving through small villages all the damn time and had to keep to the speed limits. After driving what was essentially a ground road for ten more minutes, they arrived at a huge, rectangular, windowless building smack down in the middle of a field. There was parking space set up right down on the grass around the building. There were easily over a hundred cars parked and a few busses even. When they were meandering through the cars crowding the building, Arthur saw all the posters and the way the building was lit up and realized that on days that it wasn’t used as an illegal fighting arena, it was probably a disco.

There was a huge bouncer with a clipboard at the door. Arthur could see he was armed. Monica talked to him too quickly for Arthur to pick up more than a few words. Soon after two more security guards showed up and led them to what was obviously a VIP area. They were seated close to the ring, where a guy surrounded by two beautiful and scantily clad women was obviously announcing the next fight. Arthur didn’t need to understand the language to recognize the cadence of a showman talking.

He looked around, there were at least two hundred people crammed into the huge room, seated on plastic chairs not that different from what he was sitting on. The difference was that he was as close to the ring as possible and was offered bottled water or beer as refreshments. He passed the beer but took the water. It didn’t take him long to become aware that people were staring at him. Since there were a lot of people dressed in suits, it couldn’t be the way he dressed. It probably had more to do with Monica bringing somebody with her than anything else.

“People are staring.” He said to her while the announcer was still prattling on the ring.

“They’re wondering if you are my boytoy. The rumor mill after this is going to be interesting.” She answered with a smirk, obviously inviting him for a laugh.

He took a swing of his water bottle.

“They are a few years too late.” Arthur said quietly.

This time Monica looked at him longer.

“Of all the things you ever were Arthur, being a toy was never one of them.”

This time it was his turn to stare at her, because implications of her statement made his stomach flip in unpleasant ways. 

He opened his mouth to say something but it was then that the music changed and he realized the fighters would enter now. The first one in the ring was greeted with cheers from the left side. Arthur had no idea who he was. The other, entering without a trainer or any kind of entourage was Eames.

In reality he looked even more powerful than on that video. Each muscle of his torso stood out in sharp relief, as if his body was whittled down to only power and nothing more. It wasn’t even the size of his impressive musculature that had such an imposing effect. It was the almost insane, tightly caged energy. There was something in the way he moved, pacing the small space available to him, caged like a wounded tiger, bleeding pain and anger everywhere.

He kept rising and lowering his arms, the biceps and almost over developed trapezoids bulging with every movement, betraying internal tension. His hair was short and already wet with sweat, short strands clinging to his forehead. He didn’t look like a man that came here to win the prize money. He looked like a man that came to kill, or be killed.

As much as he looked, Arthur just couldn’t imagine what could have happened to Eames, what caused him to turn into... this creature.

“You know, he makes the impression of being terrifyingly powerful, but he barely made the middle weight criteria. I estimate he’s about your height.” Monica narrated as the fight begun. The ref pulled back and Eames was out of his corner and whaling on his opponent in a matter of seconds. He was so fast and so damn vicious he broke through his opponent’s defense by sheer strength. Even though he was much bigger than before, he was probably even faster. He hit in combinations. Four hits low, three high and then a vicious kick to his opponent’s hip. 

“The goal is to get his opponent to the mat and force him to tap out. Submission holds or straight knockout are the only option here. No points, no technicalities. I’ve seen him fight two fights and he never went for the tap out. Never lost either.”

The opponent was down, barely shielding his head from the barrage of blows raining down on him. Even from a distance Arthur could tell Eames was pushing all his power behind the blows. Now that he looked he could also see the bruises that barely started to heal. Some were blue, some were still viciously red.  
Almost as if she read his mind, Monica continued.

“He fights in all available fights, not giving his body time to rest. He’s technically good but not the best I’ve seen. He seems to be relying on his anger and power and I must admit he is physically very strong. That kind of power behind blows not even the heavy weights can reach easily.”

The ref made a signal and the audience cheered. 

Eames won. 

He didn’t give any indication of being proud or happy, he just paced the ring back and forth, circling his arms, keeping himself loose and warmed up. It looked like he was on fire, like something wanted to crawl right out of his skin.

“What’s happening?” Arthur asked as he watched people carry the unconscious opponent out of the cage and the announcer started talking again.

“It’s a single elimination. He’s fighting two fights in a row, then he’s going to have a break while there are another two fights to determine his opponent, and then he’s going to fight the last one. After today there are going to be four more days of fights that will determine the winner.”

She took a swing from her water bottle and winced as a short, black man entered the cage to the cheers from the audience.

“Oh, that’s a bad match for your man.”

“Why?” Arthur never took his eyes off of Mr. Eames. He had his back to the corner now, body still moving, still twitching, something still boiling just under his skin. With so many fights ahead, Arthur started to think Eames would have to be dragged dead from the cage one day, at the rate he was going.

“He’s Jamaican” Monica answered “very fast, knows all the takedown techniques backwards and forwards, and is known for targeting only one place with his strikes. 

True to her words, this opponent managed to avoid the first charge and soon Mr. Eames was hitting the mat with a thump. He rolled to his legs fast, but not fast enough to avoid a vicious kick to the ribs.

As the fight went on, Arthur saw that Eames was landing hits. Powerful body shots and definitely more head shots than his opponent. Arthur could also see that of the blows his opponent landed, all were delivered with almost pinpoint accuracy to the two ribs that suffered the first blow. It would be a miracle if Eames managed to leave this fight without broken ribs.

He was in pain, his stance proved it, but his face only twisted in almost mindless rage. His body was slick with sweat, discolored by bruises and bleeding sluggishly from places where his skin had split. 

He could see what Monica was talking about before. He wasn’t trying to take the black man down to the mat; he fought like a man possessed.

Arthur didn’t notice Monica watching his face just as closely as he watched the fight. He didn’t notice her look from him to Eames and back, and her eyes shuttering in realization. 

The fight ended, Eames won, but definitely worse for the wear. There was a viciously red patch on his ribs and his posture wasn’t as straight any more. Bruised, maybe even broken ribs. Arthur watched him leave the ring and felt something tight and painful in his chest. This was not the man that he remembered, yet he felt familiar anyway.

“Arthur.” Monica called his name, the tone of her voice definitely odd. He looked at her, but her face was smooth, emotion hidden, her eyes full of something he couldn’t easily read.

She touched his cheek gently and leaned in to kiss him almost chastely on the lips.

“I wish you luck.” She whispered against his lips. It felt oddly like a goodbye.

She pulled a thick envelope from her bag and handed it to him. When he took it from her she opened her mouth as if to speak, confide something but then closed it. When she finally spoke, Arthur knew it wasn’t what she wanted to say before.

“Don’t let him die in that cage.”

She rose then and left, not looking back at him at all. He looked into the envelope, silently cursing himself for being so stupid not to see this earlier. It looked like human relations were never going to be his strong point.

In the envelope there were some Polish money in small bills, documents and car keys to a Renault and a sheaf of paper with information on Eames. His current alias and directions to a hotel he was using as well as a list of people involved in the tournament that were supposed to help him should he need anything. 

* * *

Arthur sat in the small, not really very comfortable hotel chair and watched Eames sleeping. For someone who managed to go so far underground for years, Arthur expected him to be a bit more cautious about his safety. Picking the lock on the cheap hotel door took only a moment. There was nothing else in the room to suggest any kind of additional security, not even a chair by the door to make noise.

He looked at sleeping man and had to admit that any security would be useless. The Englishman was passed out drunk on the bed, dressed only in sweatpants, none of his many injuries taken care of, one hand still holding a small bottle of some kind of local hard liquor judging by the smell. From what Arthur could estimate, Eames collected his winnings after the last fight, saw the doctor on site long enough to be pronounced not in immediate danger of dying, and got dropped off at the hotel by the tournament organizers. Judging by the McDonalds bag in the trashcan he at least ate something before showering and getting plastered. He didn’t bother icing his bruises, already blooming red on his skin. He didn’t even look peaceful in his sleep. His face kept contorting, lips opening like he was trying to call something or somebody. His muscles would roll from time to time signaling heavy distress. 

Nightmare then.

Eames looked much more dangerous than Arthur could ever imagine him. He also looked just as broken and desperate as Arthur felt all those years ago. It was like they had a talent for finding each other at the lowest possible point in their lives.

Arthur didn’t bother booking his own room. Eames was obviously not in any kind of state to take care of himself and it seemed Arthur was the only person even remotely interested in keeping him alive for at least some time yet.

The room was tiny. It consisted of a small table with a TV on it, one armchair, fairly big bed with two bedside tables and surprisingly spacious bathroom that had both a shower and a bathtub. Probably why the fighters were staying there and not somewhere else. Getting a long, hot soak after being beaten half unconscious in the cage would probably appeal.

With a sigh, he took off his jacket and shoes. First order of business was to wake the man up without getting killed in the process and forcing some first aid on him. 

“Mr. Eames.” He tried calling the man, but beside a particularly loud snort it didn’t seem to have any kind of effect.

He called again, reaching for the bottle still in the other man’s hands when Eames came awake with suddenness that was almost vicious. Bent over as he was, Arthur didn’t really have a chance to stop his fall when the man jerked him down onto his chest. One of his hands ended up crushed between their bodies while the other was still imprisoned in the bruising hold the older man had on his wrist. Arthur could swear he could almost hear his bones grinding together but he didn’t dare move. Eames’ other hand was on his throat, fingers clutching tightly at his windpipe. It would take only a second to crush it and kill Arthur.

The older man’s eyes weren’t even open yet, probably preserving his night vision. He lay there, perfectly still and calm, as the Englishman assessed if there were other people in the room. His body rose gently up and down with every inhale and exhale Eames took. It probably hurt like hell with those bruised ribs and whatever other injuries he amassed during the last weeks.

When he saw those grayish – green eyes blink open, he called again:

“Mr. Eames?”

Those eyes focused on his face for a very long moment, lacking any kind of recognition.

Something hot and nasty curled in his stomach. It somehow never even occurred to him that Eames might not remember him, not recognize him instantly. It felt unfair somehow, that Arthur could recognize Eames in a twenty second, crappy video that never once showed his face clearly and the Englishman couldn’t recognize him while he was literally lying on top of the man.

Finally he saw the man’s forehead crease up and his eyebrows almost formed a single line in his confusion.

Suddenly Eames let go of him, pushing him roughly away and rolling to his side, hands covering his face with a groan.

“Dear God, man, now you are hallucinating teenage twinks?” It was obviously muttered to himself but it didn’t stop Arthur from twitching internally at being called a “teenage twink”. 

Smarting from the comment, Arthur straightened up and viciously slapped the light switch, flooding the room in bright, artificial light.

Eames flinched as if hit and cursed out loud. Arthur almost felt sorry for him.

“I am no longer a teenager and I was never a twink.” He delivered in as cold and even voice as possible.

Eames stopped his groaning and stilled. It looked like he even stopped breathing for a while.

Then he sat up, much too quickly if the way he pressed his hand to his side and went slightly green meant anything, and craned his neck to look at Arthur.

“Arthur?” He asked, looking him up and down, noting the dress shirt and expensive slacks. It wasn’t the suit Arthur really wanted but it showed he had enough money to dress nicely.

“It’s been a while.” He nodded.

Eames stared at him, his expression betraying his shock... but also nothing else. It was surprising how much that unnerved Arthur. From what he remembered Eames wasn’t this hard to read, his face would either be completely unreadable or open. Not this careful, studied way he only showed the emotion he wanted, while completely hiding the other.

Arthur watched as even the shock started to slip away from that unfairly handsome face and grudgingly offered more information, somehow disappointed at how the meeting was going.

“I was looking for you. One of my contacts saw you fighting in the cage by pure accident.”

Eames tried to get up, but between the alcohol, exhaustion and injuries he wobbled dangerously. It occurred to Arthur that the man was really drunk and probably not as lucid as he appeared at all.

He came closer to stop the Englishman from trying to get up again and pushed at his shoulder trying to get him to lay down again.

“You are in no condition to talk. You need to sleep it off. We will talk in the morning.” He tried to keep his voice level to stop any kind of argument of happening.

“Sleep.” Eames brought his hand to his face again, his voice was like gravel, rough and bitter. “Not even booze can knock me out for long. Jesus what is even happening...”

Eames trailed off when Arthur sat down on the bed beside him. Arthur watched him, seeing the aura of depression and desperation more clearly now that there was no anger to mask it like in the cage. He watched and remembered the man who for the first time in his life looked at Arthur and saw something more, something else than just an asset to use. A man who brought him omelets, who watched him with interested eyes, who touched him like he was a real person, a desirable person. He remembered, as clearly as if it was yesterday, Eames raising his phone to his ear and telling his partner that Arthur was already gone. Whatever the feeling that was born in his chest at the sight of Eames lowering his gun, it was as sharp and clear now as it was seven years ago.

“I don’t have sleeping pills with me.” He said slowly as he lowered himself to kiss those lips that starred main roles in his fantasies for what felt like half his life. “Endorphins should be enough to put you back to sleep, though.” He let his hand touch that incredibly taut stomach and slide suggestively towards the loose waistband of the sweatpants, making his intentions clear.

Kissing Eames was different than he remembered, more intense somehow, even if the kiss itself was almost chaste. He merely touched his lips to the wider ones of the man beneath him. Finally it was Eames who deepened the kiss, who pulled him down and parted his lips, pressing his tongue inside. The Englishman didn’t stop him when Arthur slip his hand inside the sweats seeking out the still soft member. As he let himself be kissed, he curled his hand and stroked, getting Eames hard and them starting to jerk him off with efficiency. This wasn’t sex, the kiss was the most intimate thing they did, he only wanted to get Eames off, to burn off the alcohol. 

It didn’t take that much time but throughout the whole handjob Eames was kissing him slow and dirty, his hand curled warmly over the back of Arthur’s head. 

The bigger man arched at little as he came, cock spurting cleanly into Arthur’s hand now curled tightly over the head. Arthur straightened, watching as Eames’ eyes started drooping, between the exhaustion, alcohol and recent orgasm his body was finally pulling him down into sleep.

He got up and went into the bathroom to wash his hands. He was half hard and idly considered jerking off when he caught sight of a small refrigerator unit. When he opened it he saw a stack of icing packs inside.

He picked up all of them and returned to the bedroom. Eames was already halfway to deep sleep but needs must.

Without warning he began dropping the ice packs at the worst injuries, starting with the ribs. Eames opened his eyes with a curse.

“Bloody hell, Arthur!”

“If I don’t ice it, you won’t be able to move tomorrow.”

“God, I always suspected you were a vicious bloody shit.” Complained the Englishman, but even then his lids kept lowering, body obviously insisting it had enough of abuse today.

“Shut up and go to sleep Mr. Eames.”

* * *

Arthur woke up to the sensation of being watched. Since there wasn’t any other bed in the room, Arthur went to sleep beside Eames. Now the man was lying on his side and watching Arthur with half lidded eyes.

It looked like it was interrogation time.

With a sigh, Arthur reached for a pack of cigarettes he left on top of his bag the day before. He offered one to Eames, who took it silently.

Arthur watched the Englishman absently twirl the cigarette between fingers, never once looking down on what he was doing and made a mental not to ever play any kind of card game with the man. His fingers were way too fast for comfort.

He lit up his own cigarette and took a deep inhale. Then he leant back on the headboard and offered his cigarette to Eames. The older man took hold of his wrist and pulled it to his own mouth, instead of leaning in. His hand was warm and big on Arthur’s wrist and it sent a suspicious tingle down to his stomach. The memories of holding Eames’ dick in his hand the night before, of jerking him off till he came, burned in the forefront of his mind. It seemed that he found the man as unfairly hot as he did as a teenager.

It took a lot, not to let his hand tremble once Eames let it go.

“Why did you even look for me?” Eames was the first to ask the question.

“I... don’t know. I was grateful, probably. You didn’t need to help me and yet...” he trailed off, uncomfortable with the subject. The truth was, he never really thought about the why. He just wanted to meet the man again.

Eames snorted beside him.

“Didn’t you plan it that way?”

Arthur’s eyes shot to Eames, surprised. The other man wasn’t watching him though, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, seemingly busy with letting out the smoke in perfect little rings.

“No.” He denied. He had no idea why he felt it was so important that Eames understood. “I mean I planned on escaping, yes but what happened with you... it took me by surprise.” Even years later, after having a few lovers, the memory of Eames taking him apart with ruthless efficiency caused his stomach to tighten and cock to fill out. No one affected him quite so strongly ever again. He thought about the rush of emotions he felt the night before, kissing the man while jerking him off, and considered it ridiculous. How something as simple, as ordinary could feel so damn good. He didn’t even get off and yet he already slotted the memory into one of the better sexual encounters he had.

It was ridiculous.

Eames stubbed his cigarette into an empty coffee cup that stood on the bedside table beside him and Arthur couldn’t stop his eyes from following the movement, from watching as his biceps stretched and flexed, how his pecs tensed with the movement. God, but he wanted to lean in and bite at every well-defined muscles, wanted to suck, to leave marks all over that hard body. To mark it as his, as untouchable. It was really, really ridiculous. Eames was beaten all to hell, half his face swollen, lip split, torso marred with ugly purple bruises.

He bit the inside of his cheek to stop it from showing on his face, but judging from the sly look Eames shot him from under his half lowered eyelids, he didn’t succeed. The man smiled, wide and wicked for a briefest moment.

“Really?” it was a very provocative drawl, slow and lazy with voice like gravel and sex. 

Arthur sighed, he figured it was way too late for pretending.

“You were hot as hell, of course I noticed you. The fact that you seemed to look at me and really see me, not a tool or an asset, was the deciding factor, though.” Arthur finished his own cigarette, surprised at how quickly he smoked it. “I could tell you were uncomfortable with the idea of being attracted to me. What changed your mind?”

This time it was Eames’ turn to shift uncomfortably. He pushed himself into a sitting position and then up, off the bed, wincing at the many and varied pains. Arthur only watched the play of muscle on his back, and the tattoos on his shoulders.

“Your eyes.” Eames said it with his back to Arthur. “Those damned eyes. Like a damn Sphinx. You seemed to look right through the bullshit, straight down to the truth.” He turned back to Arthur, leaning his shoulders on the wall, facing the bed. “Your eyes seemed so calm, so unafraid. It drove me mad because I never met someone so calm, so controlled. I wanted to take you apart piece by piece. It fucked with me something awful, because you were a damn kid and I never in my life have been attracted to teenagers.”

Arthur nodded, he did remember Eames being angry. He didn’t hit Arthur but there was a certain ruthlessness, almost banked violence in the way Eames had sex with him that night that spoke of his state of mind.  
“What did you do? It took me some time before I managed to establish myself enough to be able to afford looking for you. For years there was no sign of you. All I managed to find was that you had been transferred to another unit, and your post was a glorified warehouse guard. At the time I assumed it was punishment for our joint mission. Everything seemed in order, your account seemed to get the usual amount of movement, your telephone bills oscillated in the average amounts, your lease was paid up every month... I only realized something was wrong when I tried to find you. I came to your house three times, in disguise, and each time I saw somebody else pretending to be you. He was almost perfect too, someone who didn’t know you quite like I did would probably be fooled.”

Eames nodded and stripped his sweatpants. Rapidly he pulled on his discarded jeans and started hunting for a shirt in his drawers.

“I was never punished for that job. I was offered your job.” The older man dropped the words like grenades.

He found a grey, long sleeved tee-shirt and pulled it on rapidly, barely wincing at the pain the movement must have caused him.

“I don’t understand.” Arthur prompted hesitantly.

“It turned out that our scientists already developed an alternative for the addictive Somnacin the Americans were using. After the way you defected my superiors decided that the joint project wasn’t as effective or useful as anticipated and decided to branch out on their own. A week after you, I was shipped off to a new military facility to begin training, since I already seemed familiar with the procedure. What do you know, I turned out to be bloody good at it.” Eames added the last sentence with an uncommon amount of vitriol. 

Arthur thought about the way Eames fought in the cage, about the unmitigated pain and rage seemed to ooze from his body.

“Something happened.” Arthur hazarded a guess.

Eames laughed then, but it looked more like a grimace of pain and sounded even more horrible.

“Yeah..., you could say something happened.” The older man rubbed at his face and his short hair. “I’m going for a run.”

With that he left the room, slamming the door behind him.

Arthur thought about the calm, competent, very charismatic man he met all those years ago, and this shell of a man trying to kill himself fighting in the cage. Whatever happened must have been beyond horrible.

* * *

It was already evening before one of the men provided by Monica called him and said that Eames was in the conference room that was converted into a gym for the fighters for the duration of the tournament.

When he entered the room Eames was already there for a while if the state of his completely sweated through shirt was anything to go by.

If he noticed Arthur, he didn’t react, but kept hitting the heaviest bag with quick combinations of high and low hits. He obviously wanted to hit harder but without a partner holding the bag steady, he was forced to only do the quick combinations. Arthur watched the frustrated way he had to stop once in a while to steady wait for the bag to steady.

Arthur circled the man, deliberately keeping him in his peripheral vision. He didn’t want to startle Eames while he was this fired up. While Arthur was no longer the skinny teenager and was no slouch in hand to hand combat, he wouldn’t last long against Eames in his current shape.

Once he was close enough, he reached for the bag and took hold, lowering his center of gravity. Eames cast him one long look that Arthur couldn’t decipher. During the last day he became aware that while Arthur had a great poker face, able to hide anything he felt at the moment, Eames was so much better. He not only hid what he felt, he went a step further and was subtly projecting whatever emotion was suitable at the moment. He didn’t have the kind of acting ability before, or at least it wasn’t as honed as it was now.

Arthur felt an unpleasant twist in his stomach at the thought just what could the military do with a person with such incredible acting ability.

Finally Eames nodded and changed his stance. 

This time he used combinations, kicks high and low, fists and elbows. Over and over, he would hit the bag, making Arthur slip and slide over the floor at the particularly vicious strikes.

Arthur put his shoulder to the bag and held on grimly, determined to wait Eames out. It took hours. Eventually, it was him who called for a stop. He let go of the bag and stepped back. The older man shot him an angry scowl from under his lashes clumped with sweat. 

“What?” Eames growled at him, his voice shot to hell from the exertion. Arthur wondered if it was the trained stamina or sheer bloody insanity that kept him going for so long.

Arthur nodded at his hands, not willing to show too much emotion right then. Eames looked down and swore at the tape covering his knuckles. It was pink with blood. The tape must have been too loose.

“I think you had enough for today.” 

The Englishman clenched his jaw but nodded eventually.

Arthur managed to herd him into a shower and ordered him some food because he wasn’t sure if Eames actually ate anything or if he subsided on a liquid diet.

To his surprise Eames didn’t protest. He bathed, changed and even ate. He did all of that mechanically, without any appetite or pleasure whatsoever.

“Will you tell me what happened to you? Because you look like a dead man walking right now.” Arthur was sitting on the single armchair in the room, elbows on his knees and watching Eames stretched out on the bed, staring at the ceiling with the blankest expression Arthur ever seen, even on his own face.

He was quiet for so long Arthur was sure he wouldn’t speak or even leave the room again. Suddenly that rough, gravel voice sounded in the room when Eames started talking:

“During training it quickly became clear that I was... uniquely suited for dreaming. What usually caused me no end of trouble and black marks before, suddenly became the single most valuable skill I possessed.” There was a bitter twist of his mouth barely visible from Arthur’s position across the room. “You see, it turned out I could change perception of myself in the dreams, in all dreams not my own too.”

Arthur frowned, not really understanding what Eames was talking about. The Englishman snorted, as if reading his mind. It was startling just how good the man was at reading nonverbal clues.

“It’s called Forging. I can basically look like anyone I want when dreaming. I can be a male, a female, Marilyn Monroe or your lover, your mother, maybe your child. All I needed was to watch a person for a few days and I could copy them almost perfectly in the dream.”

Arthur sucked in a shocked breath. That... that was a beyond valuable, beyond dangerous skill. It boggled the mind, the connotations, what it really meant. No wonder the military did such a stunning job of hiding Eames from the world. Jesus.

But it also made a disturbing amount of sense. He told Eames before that when they met Eames seemed to be the only man to ever look at Arthur and really see him. That ability to see though the masks added to his ability to copy shapes in dreams and... it added up to a stunningly dangerous whole. 

Eames probably didn’t even need Extractors on a mission. He could literality just come up against the mark and ask him. 

“Yeah.” Eames seemed to follow his thoughts no problem. “I was too busy being proud of myself to realize just what it meant. I got assigned missions, every one a success. I got promoted. They offered me a permanent team. I could choose them myself. A perfect spy cell.

First was Jonah, he was the ‘Tank’ in our group. Weapons specialist, the ultimate heavy hitter. A career military man.” Eames swallowed. “A good man.”

“They offered me many communications specialists from any kind of military branch I wanted but instead I trawled the prisons. Finally I found Johnny. He was barely a kid but a brilliant hacker. He was a typical street kid, knew his way around a gun and a knife, could talk himself out of most trouble. He was willing to do anything to get out of prison. Next and last was Sofia. She was an international con woman. She ran confidence schemes and did incredible forgeries of art and documents all over Europe. She got unlucky I guess when one of her marks turned out to be a deep cover spy. They locked her in one of those not existing facilities and worked her over. Eventually she had a choice. Join our team or be executed. She joined.” This time Eames smiled, remembering. “I thought I was good before I met her but... god, the things she taught me... Between us two we could forge any passport, any kind of document our team would ever need. We were bloody brilliant, in and out without leaving any traces. But I guess we were too good. By accident we stumbled on some information that was much bigger than we knew then. I committed the most grievous sin of all. I trusted in my superiors. Like a fucking naïve idiot I passed along that we had the info and asked for a meeting place.” Eames took a deep breath and his face slid into a carefully blank expression. “They got Tank first. Just goddamn gunned him down in the middle of the street. At first I didn’t even know it was my own side that did it. We’d done so many extractions, cultivated so many enemies... We got the order to come back immediately to London. Johnny was the closest so he went first.” Eames breath hitched suddenly. “The freaking kid had a sense for trouble. The moment he landed in the base, he knew something was wrong. Even with his knee shot out he managed to barricade himself in a room for seven and half minutes. He knew he was going to die. He fucking knew. The last thing he did before they gassed him out was hack into their computers using a phone he lifted off one of the soldiers that escorted him and send me a message. Once I knew it was London that was killing us off I grabbed Sofia and we went to ground. We managed only two months before they found us. They grabbed Sofia. At first I thought they killed her on the spot, but within the next week all my aliases that I created independently from my handlers were being flagged one by one. That was how I knew she was still alive. It took me four months to track her down.” Eames paused and Arthur didn’t ask if he managed to save her. He wouldn’t be where he was if he did.

“I had to do a mercy killing on member of my own team. She was like family but I couldn’t get her out. The only thing I could do for her was kill her. End her suffering. That’s why I don’t sleep now. Every time I close my eyes I see her face, or rather what was left of her face by then.”

Eames wasn’t crying or expressing his feeling in any way but his voice...the pain was almost tangible. Arthur regretted asking, regretted making him live though everything again.

Now he knew what Eames was doing here. He wasn’t just trying to beat the grief from his body in the cage. He really was waiting for death, waiting for those that hunted his whole team to find and kill him too.

“I wondered why nobody had come yet. I really wasn’t hiding all that well.”

Again with the mind reading thing.

Arthur closed his eyes and cursed quietly. Monica. She was the only explanation. Once she’d recognized Eames for the person Arthur was looking for, she’d somehow managed to shield the man from his own government. It seemed Arthur was racking in a much bigger debt than he expected.

“I... might have had something to do with that, actually.” Arthur admitted.

Eames exhaled loudly through his nose and closed his eyes for a long moment. Then he turned to look at Arthur.

“What are you doing here, Arthur?”

The question was quiet, serious.

“I don’t know.” That was also serious. Arthur didn’t really know what the hell he was doing. Only that he couldn't possibly leave Eames alone. The thought of never seeing him again, of letting him die was simply unbearable. Every time he looked at the other man he felt liquid fire crawl though his veins, felt alive like he had never been before.

The older man watched him with those blue eyes that never betrayed the whole truth. Finally it was Eames that spoke again.

“You going to help me sleep today too?” 

Arthur swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. It was a different thing the night before, where exhaustion and alcohol reduced Eames to merely kissing back. Today he was definitely in control of himself and god, but Arthur wanted him.

He was nervous, not something that happened to him often, and that made him act colder than usual. It was something he learned to do while still a kid. The first time they met, Eames saw through the mask almost immediately. Arthur hoped the man would do it again.

It was strange and unbelievably scary how he actually wanted to be vulnerable with this man, this virtual stranger.

He licked his lips and stood up, unfolding slowly from the armchair. He unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and then started on the buttons, feeling those dark blue eyes watching his every move. After taking off his shirt and hanging it neatly in the closet, he toed off his shoes and socks. The other man never took his eyes from Arthur as he slowly approached the bed and climbed astride him.

Even under all the bruising, Eames was a stunningly attractive man, and as Arthur set his weight on the fighters midsection, he was already half hard. As he leaned down for a kiss he already felt those strong, hot hands slide up his thighs to his hips. Strong and sure and yes, this was what Arthur wanted so much.

Afterwards, when they lay spent and sweaty on the hotel bed, Arthur turned his face into one of the ridiculously hard biceps’ and murmured gently:

“Do you know why my own military stopped chasing me?”

He could feel Eames looking at him, but he refrained from touching. Arthur noticed this early on that Eames kept his distance physically, but only now knew why.

“No.”

“I made it too expensive. I didn’t go on a killing spree, I didn’t leak or sell all the information I had. I just found the most expensive operation currently going on and crashed them. After the fifth project I undermined, they withdrew most of the active scalp hunters after me.”

Eames was silent for a long time, so long Arthur thought the man might be asleep.

“Care to join me in wrecking some havoc, darling?” Eames finally answered the unsaid offer.

“People I worked with before said I have some rage problems. Could do with letting off some steam.”

The last thing Arthur heard before falling asleep was a low, surprisingly delighted chuckle.

* * *

On the way back to their car, Eames watched him with hooded eyes. They’d just left a meeting with Monica that Arthur had to request. Eames’ situation was much worse than he’d ever expected going in, so he had to ask for help getting him out. Monica gave him all that she could but she looked at him with the oddest look in her eyes the whole time.

“Let me guess.” Eames rumbled behind him, his voice rough and somehow wary. “You two were lovers and you were the one to break it off.”

Arthur opened the car door with unnecessary strength.

“What makes you think so?” He asked as coldly as he could and damnit but he could be cold if he really put his mind to it.

Eames settled into the passenger side and slowly did up his safety belt.  
“Maybe the fact that she still loves you?”

Arthur closed his eyes for a moment because fuck it all to hell, he did not want to hear it. Did not want to feel this hot curl of shame in his belly. With teeth clenched almost painfully, Arthur said nothing just started the car and pulled into the traffic somewhat violently, earning himself a variety of honks.

Eames threw him a cautious, almost regretful glance, like he was sorry for pulling this shit into the daylight.

“Still, the fact that she’s helping your current lover leave the country, means she’s forgiven you.” He offered, almost apologetically. 

Arthur stared straight ahead. He thought of the kiss at the fighting arena, chaste and oddly gentle. Like a door closing.

“I know she forgave me.” He didn’t add that sometimes, for people like he and Eames, forgiveness was sometimes the most horrific thing that could be done to them.

They navigated the traffic for long silent minutes before Eames spoke again.

“Someday you will find a way to pay her back.” His hand was resting on the armrest between them, the outside of his fingers almost touching the material of Arthur’s jacket as he shifted his hold on the steering wheel.

It felt like an apology, and a little bit like a promise.

The end

 

I saw something in your eyes  
I'm sure  
(Oh baby) I saw it  
Something in your eyes  
I wanted it for myself


End file.
